Google co-founders and Silicon² Valley billionaires try to live forever

谷歌联合创始人们的长生不老之梦

One hundred and fifty thousand people die every day, reports Tad Friend of The New Yorker in the article, "The God Pill: Silicon Valley's quest for eternal life."

纽约客作者泰德•弗兰德在《上帝之药：硅谷亿万富翁们的长生美梦》一文中提道：“每天大概有15万人死去。”

The urge to combat aging, especially among the affluent³, is an old one, but new technological⁴ breakthroughs can make the prospect⁵ seem tantalizingly⁶ close.

人人都在与衰老对抗，尤其是那些富人，这已经不是新鲜的话题了，但最新的科技成果却让这种憧憬看起来触手可及。

Friend joins Nobel Prize-winning scientists, icons⁷ of the entertainment industry such as Goldie Hawn and Moby, and tech billionaires like Google co-founder¹ Sergey Brin, for the launch of the National Academy of Medicine's Grand Challenge in Health Longevity⁸, which will distribute $25 million as part of its endeavors to, as one doctor puts it, "end aging forever."

弗兰德结识了一些诺贝尔奖获奖者，娱乐界的名人比如歌蒂•韩和莫比，以及一些来自的硅谷的亿万富翁如谷歌的联合创始人谢尔盖•布林，他们一起支持了由国家医学院的一项关于健康寿命的重大研究，他们将在此项目上投资2500万来“永葆青春”。

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, at the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena⁹ in Cleveland, Ohio.

贝宝公司和帕兰特公司的联合创始人彼得·泰尔出席于2016年7月21日在俄亥俄州克利夫兰举办的全国共和党大会

For the super rich in the "life-extension community," it's a small world. Brin, whose company has invested over $1 billion in a "longevity lab" called Calico (short for the California Life Company), is dating Nicole Shanahan, the founder of a patent-management business that will work with some of the National Academy's biotech patents.

在超级富豪们的“长寿圈”中，上述举动只是冰山一角。布林的公司已经向一家名为Calico（加利福尼亚生命公司的简称）的“长寿实验室”投资超过10亿美元。他最近正在和专利管理业务的创始人尼克•沙哈娜进行会面，后者将和国家科学院合作处理一些生物技术专利。

If all goes well, Brin won't age, either, or not past a certain point. Slowing or stopping that process is the current focus of biochemist Ned David, co-founder of Unity¹⁰ Biotechnology, who is 49 but, according to Friend, looks 30. The scientist's youthfulness is part of his appeal, writes Friend.

如果一切进展顺利，布林将不会变老，或者，不会突破某个年龄界线。 生化学家奈德•大卫目前将其研究的重点放在延缓或停止衰老进程，身为统一生物技术机构的联合创始人，他虽然已经49岁了，但在弗兰德眼中，他看起来只有30岁而已。弗兰德写道，奈德的这种青春状态，也是他需求的一部分。

Investing in bio-tech breakthroughs is one way the super rich are trying to stay young and healthy indefinitely. Others in the community are settling for cryogenic freezing, in the hopes that they can be thawed¹¹ once regenerative science has sufficiently¹² advanced.

超级富豪们试图永葆青春和享受无尽的健康的途径之一便是在生物技术方面投资。“长寿圈”里其他人则倾向于于将他们的器官冷冻起来，等到再生技术充分发展之时再将其解冻。

Alcor CEO Max More poses in front of the dewars

安国公司的CEO马克思站在用于存放液氮的杜瓦瓶前

CNBC reported in 2016 that "thousands of people around the world have put their trust, lives and fortunes into the promise of cryonics." At that point, at Alcor's center in Scottsdale, Ariz., nearly 150 individuals had elected to preserve either their heads ($80,000) or their entire bodies ($200,000) in liquid nitrogen.

2016年，全美广播公司财经频道曾经报道“来自全世界的成千上万的人们都将他们的信任，他们的生命及财产交与了低温冷冻技术”。就在那时，安国公司位于亚利桑那州斯科茨代尔的中心选出了150人，将他们的头（80,000美元/人）或身体（200,000美元/人）用液氮冷冻。

If there is a way to "solve death," as Friend puts it, whether through cryonics or gene therapies, a kind of vampirism in which Silicon Valley billionaires "end up being sustained by young blood" or more wholesome¹³ methods such as good nutrition and medicine, some combination of the above or perhaps an actual sorcerer's stone, the next generation of well-funded alchemists is determined¹⁴ to find it.

正如弗兰德所说，若“阻止死亡”的方法真的存在，不论是通过低温冷冻还是基因疗法（即“吸血鬼症”，得了此病的富翁们最终只能靠吸收新鲜血液来维持生命），亦或是采用更加全面的手段，如摄入营养品或药物，资金充足的术士一定可以找到让人长生不老的诀窍，它可能是以上几种手段的组合，也可能是一块真正的魔法石。

As a 30-year-old start-up founder confidently tells Friend, "The proposition that we can live forever is obvious. It doesn't violate the laws of physics, so we will achieve it."

一位30岁的企业创始人满怀信心地对弗兰德说：“我们想要长生不老的意愿显而易见，它并不违反物理学定律，因此是可以实现的。”